Mike Most -- account bouncing, bad address
Forum Replies Created
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>>What a horrible thought. Letting money be the deciding factor.
What planet do you live on? Here’s a flash: Money ***IS*** the deciding factor. If you have it, you can do whatever you want. If you don’t, you can’t. Simple.
>>I know there are labs that charge less.
And you acquired this knowledge… how??
FotoKem is one of the most reasonably priced labs in the country, and they specialize in student and low budget work. If you can’t afford it, you can’t do it. -
>>HDCAM SR – lightly compressed MPEG4, full raster, 4:4:4
At this point in time, there is no such thing as an HDCam SR camcorder. The only Sony camera capable of 4:4:4 operation is the F950, which is a camera head only and requires an external recorder. Any camera using HDCam SR is, by definition, using a separate recorder, either one of the SR studio decks or the portable SRW1.
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>Loading via FireWire is a bad idea except for off-line. Every effect and >layer degrades the image. If you’re color grading with an off-line >resolution, you probably have to redo everything with full resolution >anyway.
This is only partly true, and depending upon your delivery format, may or may not be significant. If you’re coming in via SDI, you go through one decode cycle coming off tape. If you go in via Firewire, you go through the same one decode cycle when you create an effect (you don’t incur any decoding cycles if the material is cuts only), only it’s done in software. Unless you’re really fond of nesting, this is the only decode cycle you go through, one per source, for each rendered effect. On playout, you avoid an encoding (i.e., compression) cycle only if you record on an uncompressed format – and since there isn’t any common uncompressed HD tape format, that’s very unlikely, unless you are somehow delivering files rather than tape (also unlikely). If you’re playing out to DVCPro HD, that encoding cycle is avoided if you go out via Firewire, because the material is already compressed. If you go out via SDI, you go through the same encoding and compression, only you do it in the recording deck. But the result is the same – one encoding/compression cycle after rendering. In fact, if you have material that is not being affected in any way, it could be argued that the Firewire approach is considerably more transparent, since there are no decode/encode cycles involved at all. The only time this situation changes is if you’re playing out to a format other than DVCPro HD, since the extra encode/compression cycle to return the material to DV100 format can be avoided. This can indeed be significant.
If, however, you’re playing out to DVCPro HD, other than a situation in which the editor does a lot of nesting – thus defeating the “render once” scenario – I can’t really see what the advantages are that Leo is alluding to. To me, the situation with DVCPro HD is no different than with DV25 – and it’s yet to be proven to me that there’s any real advantage to decompressing that format prior to editing, other than taking up a hell of a lot more storage and slowing down system response.
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>>Before the HVX-200 this was a QUESTIONABLE possibility at best (digital video is very pixilated when >>blown up).
It’s still a questionable possibility because contrary to all the pronouncements on this forum, the HVX200 doesn’t exist yet and nobody here or anywhere else has ever seen any images from it.
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Or render the last frame (the one you want to freeze) by using “Save Image” and bring it back in as a still.
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>would you say that all the points you mentioned before justify a >$30000/40000 (depending on trade-in offers) price difference between them?
Any answer to a question like that requires context. If you were a post house serving high end episodic television programs, or support for feature editorial and previews, the answer would likely be yes, because you would have a very, very hard time convincing these clients that you can be as efficient on a Final Cut system in finishing their Avid-cut, 24 frame material, as you could on, say, a Symphony (if you were SD, not likely today) or even a DS, at an even higher cost of entry. If you are serving a different clientele, one that isn’t quite so tied to any particular offline system, it would be a different scenario in which the answer to that question might be different.
My point is that if you were to listen to the statements being made here, not surprisingly they seem to indicate that people here favor Final Cut, for various reasons, and feel that anyone who chooses anything else, particularly something more costly, must be either blind or dumb, because, after all, why spend more when you can spend less? I think you and I know that on a purely business level, it’s not that simple. Things that might on the surface appear equal are not always equal.
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Mark, your points are valid and well taken. However, I don’t believe the company you’re involved with is a business catering to outside clients. You don’t have to be concerned with work coming in from outside editors working on whatever system they’re working on, nor do you have to be concerned with client perception of what it is you do and how you do it. When you have a closed shop, basically an “in house” situation, you can do whatever you want because everything is set up for that one, homogeneous system. When you have a business that takes in outside work, compatibility, speed, flexibility, and efficiency are primary. If I were setting up an in house editing unit, I might very well go the same route you did. If, however, I was setting up a business to cater to network television programs (the vast bulk of which are cut on Avid systems, regardless of the current hype) and/or commercial clients, I would likely go with Avid for all the reasons I mentioned previously.
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Oops, I just reread your original post and see that your business is primarily shortform material. Ignore that part of my previous post. The rest still applies.
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>>By going FCP, will my clients or potential clients think that I am a “B” company because I don’t have either Avid >>or discreet (the 2 daddies of high end stations) on offer?
Why not ask them, instead of people on a Final Cut Internet forum? I’m not saying that to be facetious, I’m saying it because you haven’t mentioned what type of business you primarily handle, or your location. These things are very significant in terms of client perception and the value of it.
>>Will I be considered a low budget facility?
Once again, on a Final Cut Internet forum, the only answer you should expect to get is “of course not.” Your reality may be different than that.
The questions I would ask you are:
1. What end of the business do you primarily cater to – commercials, music videos, corporate, network episodic, film editorial, or something else?
2. What do most of your clients (assuming you’re a finishing facility) cut on? And at what frame rates? If the answer is “Avid” and “24 frame” then an Adrenaline or DS has much to recommend it in terms of seamless movement of the timeline from offline to online. Even Automatic Duck, the primary software used for timeline translation, cannot handle 24 frame projects in either direction. The ability to read your clients timelines directly adds immensely to online efficiency vs. the EDL approach. Time is money.
3. Which brings up another point, which is rendering speed. Adrenaline (and Symphony, and DS) will reliably play many projects with little or no rendering at all, especially where color correction is required. That’s the whole point of the DNA boxes. Final Cut, regardless of the capture card, will ultimately require some degree of rendering for reliable, no-frames-dropped final output. Once again, time is money.
4. Do you plan to network multiple systems and use shared storage? If so, the Avid Unity system is complete, established and proven, whereas any SAN solutions for Final Cut have, at least to this point, been provided by third parties not necessarily dedicated specifically to video work. That’s not to say they don’t work, but you will likely need to be much more involved in the design and implementation, as opposed to Avid’s essentially off the shelf solution.
4. Do you do any sound work, and does that involve use of Pro Tools? If so, the connection between Avid products and Pro Tools (itself an Avid product) is more complete and seamless, almost by definition.When you ask users of one system or another their opinions, especially on Internet forums devoted to those products, you rarely get an unbiased answer. You more likely than not get reasons for their own decisions, which are not necessarily valid for yours. Final Cut users in general see primarily the dollar signs involved in original system purchase, not the bigger picture of client perception, specific market needs, or particular requirements which sometimes make the original system purchase figure much less significant. You need to examine your own needs and act accordingly.
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>With Avid, if you want to work with more than DV, you have the inexpensive Mojo (a clunky little box with non->pro connectors) and thats it.
Not true. XPress Pro can work with a number of different formats, although it can’t digitize all of them. However, as of the most recent version (currently available only on PC, Mac version is forthcoming) you can bring in DV25, DV50, and DVCProHD (at least at 720/60p) over Firewire, just like Final Cut. You can also work with other formats, provided they’re captured on a bigger system (Adrenaline, Symphony, etc.). One thing the most recent version also does that Final Cut doesn’t is remove “standard” 3:2 pulldown from NTSC sources on capture, in software – something which requires a separate pass through Cinema Tools in the Final Cut world, unless you’re using a capture card that supports it. I agree it’s a bit more clunky, but the truth is that something like 98% of Final Cut users never cut anything but DV anyway, despite what is often written here about scalability.